The Sea Never Says It Loves You

You could go to school with the seaYou might pass it in the hall.Maybe it asks you out. Maybe a movie or a dance—the waves curling about your ankles People looking at you weird But the water is warm and the salt spray tastes your lipsAnd you say yes.

You could marry the seaMight be it brings you pearls,Or bright lights on the horizon blinking red and green and white,A school of dolphins each day at twoTo make you smile.But it never says anythingBecause it is the sea.

You could have the ocean’s childA fish-pale, seaweed-haired shellThat splits you open and spills outAnd you can watch everyone turn to catch it while you fall away.

You could walk by the sea in all seasonsThe season of umbrellas and noiseThe season of small dogs barkingThe seasons of strange machinery digging at the shoalsThe season of wind moving the water in new waysThe sound of the waves comforting. The sea is comforting in its strong silences.

But you cannot ask the sea to come to you and you cannot tell it what you want,for it is the sea, and it never really heard youwhen it flooded the gates and overcame everything.

And you are bathed in salt spray, wishing.Wishing you were water,or that the sea would whisper from a shell the name of the first song you danced toOr say the name it gave you before it swallowed you up.

Fran Wilde’s novels and short stories have been finalists for three Nebula awards, two Hugo Awards, and a World Fantasy Award. They include her Andre Norton- and Compton Crook-winning debut novel, Updraft (Tor, 2015); its sequels, Cloudbound and Horizon; the middle-grade novel Riverland (forthcoming from Abrams in April 2019); and the novelette “The Jewel and Her Lapidary.” Her short stories appear in Asimov’s, Tor.com, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Shimmer, Nature, and the 2017 Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror. “Clearly Lettered in a Mostly Steady Hand,” which appeared in Uncanny, was a finalist for the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy Award, and won the 2018 Eugie Foster Memorial Award. You can find her on Twitter, Facebook, and at franwilde.net.